Friday, January 23, 2009

The first photo is from Silvia who said, "I made your no knead ciabatta bread and loved it. It turned out really nice and the flavor was so much better than shop bread. It's so easy to make that we will have fresh ciabatta bread all the time now!"

The second loaf is from "first time bread maker" who said, " What a mess I've got going here! My raw loaf looks like a patched wall. While it's "resting" during these next the two hours, I'm hoping it heals itself so the patched marks aren't so evident, and although it's before noon, I think I'll have a glass of wine. I'm a nervous wreck. (more of my disastrous results to follow...) Maybe I'll send you a picture of the results. Maybe not.

The last loaf is from Calvin who said, "I am absolutely happy with its outcome. I did have a water plate in the oven and spray some water at the beginning of baking. Somehow, mine only took about 30 minutes and I have to keep lowering the temp a bit.

If anyone is wondering, if you let it rise the 18 hours, punch it down, and then go to the bar for 5 hours (whoops), your bread will be fine. It will not be ciabatta style bread, but a flatter english muffin style bread that is also very delicious.

Second try and still a failure. It is so simple how can I miss? My bread is flat like a pizza. Maybe too much water?

Everything looks fine at all steps. Even after 18 hours, it looks bubbly and sticky like in the video. After turning it again and again, it looks a bit wet. When I put it on the saran wrap (with flour on it) it is so mushy, sticky and wet that I am barely able to strech it. It sticks to everything. When it is time to flip it, it even sticks to the saran wrap. After 2 hours in the pan, it is still flat. Very flat, but it has doubled. In the oven, it doubles (mayby) in height, but the bread is less than a inch thick. The crust is nice. The inside looks perfect except it looks a bit wet.

I use bread flour. I measure as carefully as when I do bread in my bread machine. My water is warm. Yeast is fresh from the store. I use yeast for bread machine. I am missing something.